AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01)

Compare public, private, and hybrid cloud platforms from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba. Learn how private clouds, VMware, and economy of scale optimize security, compliance, and cost.

Explore cloud native design, contrasting lift-and-shift with elastic, scalable infrastructure, automation, and modular architecture in AWS, including serverless concepts like lambda, and identify cloud service models SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

Explore cloud service models—from software as a service to platform as a service and infrastructure as a service—using a pizza analogy to illustrate shifting responsibility and required skills.

Discover how AWS groups 200-plus services into core categories—compute, storage, networking, and databases. Explore key services like EC2, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, VPC, and Redshift and how the console organizes them.

Explore connectivity options to the cloud, including public internet, VPNs, and Direct Connect, with explanations of client VPN, site-to-site VPN, and colocation facilities.

Access the cloud by selecting GUI, CLI, API, or SDK options, using the console or cloud shell, and configuring IAM access and API gateways.

Compare AWS compute services: EC2 virtual servers, ECS containers, and Lambda functions. Learn how load balancers enable scalable, distributed traffic across clusters in the cloud.

Launch an EC2 instance in the AWS console, choose an AMI and instance type, and create a key pair for secure access.

Explore how ECS in AWS deploys container images stored in ECR repositories. Run tasks and services on EC2-backed clusters behind the scenes.

Explore lambda serverless compute, using the Hello World blueprint in the console to run code with triggers, test outputs, and understand millisecond-based pricing and memory impact.

Explore storage services like S3, EBS, and EFS, and compare storage types. Review hybrid options and offline pay-as-you-go solutions like storage gateways, snowball, and snowmobile.

Explore how to create an S3 bucket, upload an object, and control access with public access settings and a bucket policy, illustrating object storage in AWS.

Explore three core AWS networking services: VPC, security groups, and Route 53, defining network space, protecting instances, and mapping website addresses to IP addresses for global reach.

Explore virtual private cloud, public and private subnets, and how internet gateways and route tables define internet access within a VPC.

Explore how security groups guard EC2 instances with stateful inbound rules, and how network ACLs protect subnets, in a practical AWS security walkthrough.

Explore AWS database services, comparing relational and non-relational models and how RDS, DynamoDB, and Redshift fit different use cases, from transactional queries to data warehousing.

Learn how to create and protect a relational database with AWS RDS. Choose engines like MySQL and explore multi-az deployments, security groups, backups, and read replicas.

Explore AWS support services from free to premium, learn how to choose with the well-architected framework and best practices, and access resources like knowledge center, architecture center, and partner network.

Explore how AWS Trusted Advisor tracks best practices and flags security, IAM, and configuration gaps across well-architected pillars. Learn how its checks help optimize security, costs, and service limits.

Understand the shared responsibility model and how AWS and customers divide security across data, endpoints, and cloud infrastructure. See this split illustrated with EC2, RDS, and S3.

Explore AWS security documentation, best practices, and resources, including white papers, blogs, and videos, that cover security in the cloud, the shared responsibility model, and tools like inspector.

Explore multi-layer cloud network security in AWS using security groups, NACLs, network firewalls, and web application firewalls to protect subnets, instances, and web apps.

Explore how cloud compliance differs from security, meeting government and industry standards with least privilege, auditing tools, and AWS shared responsibility using Artifact and Audit Manager.

Explore how to monitor cloud resources using CloudWatch, set alarms with thresholds, and route notifications through SNS topics and subscriptions to EC2, S3, and other services.

Discover how logging differs from monitoring, and how CloudTrail records API activity and stores logs in S3 for retroactive auditing and security insights.

Explore how AWS IAM uses policies to define permissions for identities like users, groups, and roles, and how temporary roles differ from long-term policies with practical EC2 examples.

Learn cloud access management best practices in AWS, including secure programmatic access, credential handling, password design and policies, and multi-factor authentication with virtual MFA, security keys, and IAM.

Explore how to track costs across an entire organization with AWS organizations, consolidated billing, cost reports, tagging, and volume discounts to allocate expenses by department or project.

Explore EC2 pricing models to save costs, including on-demand, reserved (standard and convertible), and spot instances with per-second pricing and marketplace options.

Explore how S3 pricing works across storage classes and lifecycle rules to auto-transition data from standard to infrequent access and Glacier, optimizing costs and retrieval considerations.

AWS pricing options across EC2, Lightsail, and Lex, and learn to use the AWS Pricing Calculator and Pricing API to build detailed, region-aware cost estimates for budgeting.

Study for the AWS certified cloud practitioner exam using the AWS free tier with hands-on console practice, and learn 12-month and always-free options and their limits.

Master last-minute cloud practitioner prep with AWS free trials, exam objectives, and practice questions. Focus on verbs like define and explain to understand concepts and teach others for deeper learning.